Last Hanukkah we started making Reading Bingo Challenges for each of our holidays as a fun way to engage more deeply with holiday reading and help identify holiday symbols and today we enjoyed using our High Holidays Reading Bingo Challenge!
What You’ll Need
- High Holidays Reading Bingo Challenge free printable
- Space Markers—pen/pencil/crayon, stickers, or whatever other marker you’d like to use. We love these Rosh Hashanah stickers from Benny’s Educational Toys and these Hebrew encouragement stickers from LeeLaaLou!
- Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and High Holiday books! Check out our favorites here or order directly through our shop on Bookshop.org (supports independent bookstores, yay!)!
Putting It Together
- Print out the High Holidays Reading Bingo Challenge free printable.
- Start reading High Holidays books.
- Mark off each space as you come across that item in a High Holiday book. To mark off the space, you can cross off the box, put a sticker on it or use whatever markers you want. Another decision you can make is whether the kids get to mark off multiple boxes from one book or if they can only mark off one box per book.
Finished & Loving It!
We love kicking off our holiday preparations by creating a holiday-themed book box, gathering all our related holiday books, and snuggling together to read them, this time while enjoying the High Holidays Reading Bingo Challenge!
For our High Holidays book box, we made High Holiday symbol coffee filter crafts. These were so simple–just color on coffee filters with washable markers, then spray them with some water. The colors shift (through a process with the fancy name of chromatography) and create some really neat designs once they dry. I made some High Holiday stencils (yep, I have some plans to use these stencils again in the upcoming weeks!) so the kids could practice tracing the symbols onto the dried coffee filters. They then cut the symbols out. These were all great fine motor skills practices. It’s also great for the kids to practice holding the coffee filter steady while they trace and of course, holding and maneuvering the filter while they cut out the symbols. We then glued the symbols onto colored construction paper and cut these to create a colorful border around the symbols. Once the symbols were glued to the painted box, we had a really inviting and sweet High Holiday Book Box!
When I brought out the High Holidays Reading Bingo Challenge the kids couldn’t wait to grab and start reading some of their favorite books. We always start our High Holiday reading with the sweet book Apple Days by Allison Soffer. The kids were happy to be able to immediately peel off some of the Rosh Hashanah stickers we got from Benny’s (if you haven’t checked out this store before, I highly recommend. We purchase many items from them for our synagogue’s religious school and I enjoy getting special items for my own kids too. Their holiday stickers are a great price too!). Of course, peeling stickers is another great way to practice fine motor skills development! Matching the bingo spaces, the High Holiday symbols, with what is being read in the books, is also a wonderful way to develop reading comprehension. And it is, of course, FUN!
Do you have a great collection of High Holiday books? I hope you enjoy reading them and playing along with the High Holidays Reading Bingo Challenge! I’d also love to know your favorite High Holidays books–I think I should get a few more this year and I’d love your recommendations!
I was so excited to start our High Holiday preparations with all my kids in this way. I have many fun and meaningful activity ideas that we will explore in the coming weeks but remember, it often takes me awhile to get my activities up on the blog (too busy playing!). If you want to see what we’re doing in real time, follow us on Instagram!
Check out our High Holidays Hub for more information, resources, and lots of activities for you and your kids to explore this Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur!
A few of our favorite quick references:
For some of our favorite High Holiday books, take a look at our Bookshop.org With Love, Ima Storefront (each purchase supports local bookstores!).
Looking for a fun way to incorporate apples and honey into your Rosh Hashanah celebrations? Check out these delicious products from Nuts.com! We LOVE Nuts.com and think your tummies will love these goodies too. Shanah Tovah!
*This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link!*
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[…] full how-to for the book box can be found here. And don’t forget to print your free copy of the bingo printable here! […]
[…] full how-to for the book box can be found here. I also love adding a fun reading challenge to our holidays with our holiday-themed reading bingo […]